phone reviews

I got a chance to play around with the new Huawei P9. It’s co-engineered with Leica and meant to reinvent smartphone photography. The thing that jumps out the most is the dual-lens at the back of the phone. That’s right, this smartphone has TWO lenses instead of the usual one at the rear. It also has 2 sensors so you can capture more light. I took it out to snap photos during the weekend.

Nowadays, smartphones are primarily used to take photos of weekends, food and miscellaneous daily happenings to post to Instagram, Facebook, blogs. That’s what I use mine for anyway, and the image quality so good that I don’t feel the need to carry a regular digicam or dSLR anymore. It’s still not as good as a dSLR, of course, but the Huawei P9 is really close, close enough that I’ll choose the portable smartphone any day.

The Huawei P9 has dual 12 MP cameras with a professional mode! This allows you to control all the aperture, shutter and ISO settings and save photos in RAW so it feels like a dSLR.

The technologies packed into the smartphone camera is quite impressive too – there are now built-in dual-core ISP (image signal processors), professional DSP, and depth-measurement ISP for improved image focusing, speeds and processing. This allows you to take action shots of fast moving objects in low light conditions.

There are several presets you can use to take good photos well, like the HDR mode.

The P9 has a feature which automatically takes documents too! I found that quite useful.

The lens are co-developed with Leica so the image quality is really good.

I love how bright and vibrant the colors are.

I got this new Pocky Brazilian Orange just to show off the intense color production of the camera. I can’t go back to using faded looking smartphone cameras after this beautiful shot. Oh, and the Pocky is pretty good too, it’s a Japan import to celebrate the Rio Olympics and it tastes intensely orange-y.

This is the Panoramic mode.

The camera will also auto-detect faces and focus on them.

There’s also a 8 MP front facing camera for selfies too! This was taken in pure darkness and the built-in flash went off, illuminating my face well enough to temporarily blind me. It also colored my face pretty decently, when you keep in mind that this was taken with zero other lighting, it’s really impressive. I remember when 8 MP was a lot for a rear facing camera in a smartphone and now even the front-facing ones are 8 MP. Amazing!

The Huawei P9 also has a dial for “Beauty” which can go from 0-10. You remember those third-party apps that some teenagers use to artificially enlarge and add shine to their eyes and add a BB cream smooth sheen to their skin? It’s all built-in now – no need for 3rd party apps.

I took one as a demonstration. This is ultra boosted up to a 10 so it looks mildly ridiculous. I personally don’t approve of apps like this coz I don’t like how it looks. I don’t use them myself but that may be due to the fact that I already have nice eyes genetically (thanks mom). I can see that a lot of people like them though, so to each his/her own.

The smartphone also does everything well. I like the automatic step counter and the vivid 5.2” FHD display. The 3,000 mAh battery is pretty useful too. I don’t need to recharge every few hours and it works for up to 24 hours at full capacity in my daily tasks. There’s a fingerprint sensor and a virtual triple antenna with WiFi+ 2.0 which switches automatically between HSDPA+ and WiFi networks. I love the feel of the aerospace-class unibody aluminum and 2.5D glass. The Huawei has all the functions of a modern smartphone you’ll expect and more.

I actually saw the Huawei P9 advertisement in the cinema and thought it looked like a brilliant smartphone. As the smartphone market matures, non-camera technical specifications have increased so much that it makes little difference even in the most graphics intensive games. As such, it falls to other things to differentiate one smartphone from another and I like the direction the Huawei P9 is taking with the camera. It’s the most useful thing on a smartphone for most people and I appreciate how the superior camera and lenses allows me to capture high quality photos in such a small and sleek handset.

I finally have a new cell phone after my old trusty; the Ericsson
T-28s finally kicked the bucket and went to cell phone heaven. I’ve
been waiting around for the right model to come out, going without
mobile phone service (the horror!) for days, before my tardiness was
rewarded. My girlfriend gave me a Sony Ericsson K700i as an early
Christmas gift!

I’ve used this cell phone for about a week now, to familiarize
myself with it for a review. The contents of the Sony Ericsson K700i
box consists of the charger, the hands free cum FM radio ear buds and
the mobile phone itself. There are also manuals, a CD and other
miscellaneous stuff at the bottom.

The CD contains the PC Suite software (sync software) and several
other software like an Image Editor, MMS Home Studio, Sound Editor,
Mobile Networking Wizard (the K700i also functions as a modem) etc.

Here’s a photo of the full contents of the Sony Ericsson K700i box.

This is what the cell phone looks like. There’s a peel off scratch
guard on the screen that shows several features of the phone – 65K TFT
screen, VGA camera and video recorder, Bluetooth, 41 MB of inbuilt
memory, 4x digital zoom etc. I love how the Quickshare text on the
bottom of the phone changes the color hues as you turn it around.

The Sony Ericsson K700i is billed as a “dual front” phone – a
marketing buzzword that essentially means one side looks like a digital
camera and the other looks like a phone. This is the back of the cell
phone, the one that looks like a digital camera.

Here’s a close up of the digital camera bit. It’s very nifty –
there’s the sleek lens module, a nice shiny mirror that’s used for
self-portraits, a bright LED light for night/dark conditions.

There’s a quick start button on the left side of the cell phone to
go to the digicam/video recorder feature. There’s also up and down
toggles for various functions, depending on the context. It’s a zoom
in/zoom out feature in the camera, a volume control while on calls, and
an up/down button while text messaging (SMS).

The other side of the phone has an “Online” button which makes the
phone go into connectivity mode. It has various modes of communication
– GPRS, Bluetooth, IrDA, etc.

The top of the phone contains the IrDA (Infrared) port, which I use to sync with my notebook. It works with a Palm as well.

Here’s the keypad of the K700i. It has nice, (relatively) large
buttons so there are no problems with using the keypad. There is also a
joystick which is not so easy to use…or maybe I’m just having trouble
getting used to it.

The screen is a generous 176 x 220 pixel TFT display capable of 65K
colors. I was surprised by the richness of the screen when I first used
the cell phone. It has really rich and vibrant colors with a fast
refresh rate.

The Sony Ericsson K700i boots up with the Sony Ericsson logo and the keypads also illuminates with a purple hue.

It boots into a setup wizard the first time it’s on, which is easy to complete.

In no time at all, the cell phone is up and working. There are
several build in themes to choose from, all animated! The animated
display is very nifty…

I switched to a futuristic design as my personalized main screen.
The light blocks flicks in a rhythmic manner and I’m keeping this one
for the sheer Nifty Factor (TM).

The main menu shows all the applications that are on the Sony
Ericsson K700i…there are several features on this phone – MMS, EMS,
SMS (any S basically), MPEG-4 playback, MP3 playback, radio (FM), Java
applications etc.

Heck, there’s even a place to input business card details which I’ve
successfully beamed (using IR) to my Palm, since supports various
formats, including the Palm vCard specification.

The most nifty feature in the SE K700i is the light that comes on at the back of the camera. It’s very bright and allows photo taking in dark conditions.

Here is a photo taken with the Sony Ericsson K700i:

It has been downsized from 640 x 480 to 400 x 300.Click on the image for the original photo.

This is a short clip taken by the Sony Ericsson K700i. It’s in .3gp format and can be viewed with Quicktime.

I love the Sony Ericsson K700i. It has the right balance between features and size. Thanks Louisa! :)

The only problem is that people complain that I’m shouting at them
on the phone. I have to explain that my old cell phone has a really bad
mike so I had to talk really loudly. I’m still getting used to the much
more sensitive one on the SE K700i. I’m slowly learning not to “shout”.
;)